From The 1963 Olio

Philip Gossett
62-60 99th Street, Forest HIlls, N.Y..
Prepared at Forest HIlls High School.
Major: Music.
Bond 15, Glee Club, Accompaniest
Masquers, STUDENT, .
Collegium Musicuum, SPHINX
Deceased June 13, 2017

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In Memory

Philip Gossett died on June 13, 2017 at his home in Chicago. The New York Times described Philip as "a musicologist whose shoe-leather detective work in musty archives and Italian villas helped bring long-lost operas back to the stage." Many have said that Philip was the leading authority in the world on the performance of Italian opera. The University of Chicago published Philip’s book Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera in 2006, truly a treasure for opera lovers.

In late June Riccardo Muti devoted the final series of the Chicago Symphony 2016-17 subscription concerts to excerpts from Italian operatic masterworks and dedicated them to Philip, his late friend and colleague.

Philip grew up in New York City. He studied piano beginning at age 5 at Julliard's Preparatory Division. At Amherst he studied physics and math for 3 years but decided to change directions as he approached his senior year. Instead, he took a year off to study music at Columbia. He returned to Amherst a year later, changed his major to music and graduated summa cum laude in 1963. He earned his doctorate from Princeton and immediately joined the faculty of the University of Chicago for the rest of his career. At retirement, he was both a Distinguished Service Professor in Music at Chicago and Professor of Music at the University of Rome. The Andrew M. Mellon Foundation awarded Philip its lifetime achievement award, and the Italian Government gave him its highest civilian award in 1998.

Philip is survived by his wife, Suzanne, whom he married in 1963, sons David and Jeffrey and 5 granddaughters. My wife and I had the privilege of spending several wonderful days with Philip and Suzanne in Rome in 2006. He was a brilliant man whose scholarship will be a lasting legacy to music and opera. He was perhaps the first classmate I met at Amherst. I will miss his personal notes and his friendship.

SANDY SHORT '62